<<< STUFF >>>

Ah, yes, stuff.

Let's see.

"Videodrome." Huh. Interesting. Well, I love James Woods's voice (no one could have been a better Hades in "Hercules.").... so that was a plus. Oh, and Deborah Harry is in it. As a brunette. How ironic. But she was good too........ uuuh........ well, I guess it's something you need to see just to experience, right? And I liked the idea behind.... just now so sure how I felt about the execution....

But the film we watched tonight in film class I enjoyed greatly. The film was "Необычайные приключения мистера Веста в стране большевиков" ("The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks"). It's a black and white silent film from 1924 and the whole thing plays with stereotypes: what Russians thought Americans were like, what Russians thought Americans thought Russians were like, what Russians thought Russians were like, etc. And parts of it are just hilarious. The main character, Mr. John West, has a pair of American flag socks (the American flag is a useful flag to use in black and white films as it has suck a distinctive pattern, you don't need the color to know what country's flag it is). There were also some quotes in it that I liked:

"Comfort is a relative conception."

"Reading about cowboys continues to fascinate Russian children." (Perhaps this one was only really funny to me because of the context..... which was.... there was no context. They threw this part in totally randomly towards the end of the movie, right before the cowboy and the lady get together and the lady literally throws a cat on the sofa so she can hug the cowboy and then they sit in the sofa together and play with a bunch of kittens.... ?????)

And, at the end, when Mr. West realizes that the Bolsheviks aren't all that bad (in a telegram to his wife): "Burn those New York magazines and hang a portrait of Lenin on the wall! Long live the Bolsheviks!"

I also started reading on the metro this morning The Best American Travel Writing: 2007 edited by (love of my life) Susan Orlean. As it is from 2007, you can see that it has been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read for quite some time now, but it seemed eerily appropriate that I started reading it now because two out of the first three stories heavily involve Russia. The first one, "A Brief and Awkward Tour of the End of the Earth" by Jason Anthony is all about the Russians' base in Antarctica, Vostok (SASHA I thought of you and our excursion to the Arctic/Antarctic museum!!!), where famously a dispute over a game of chess turned into an ax murder. Also, it should be noted that the Vostok station was opened on my birthday thirty years before I was born (thanks, Wikipedia!). I loved his description of the cook's kitchen at this isolated, shabby, cold Antarctic base because it could have been Olga's kitchen in our apartment:

"A mound of boiled eggs glistened in a large bowl like dabs of white paint. Withered window box plants stood silhouetted against the snow. In the dusty light, half a dozen scuffed dark tables held slabs of black bread, a brick of yellow butter, and a plate of sliced pink salami." Sounds like my breakfast every morning.

The second essay in the book is about drugs in Africa, but the third one, "A Kielbasa Too Far" by Ian Frazier, is all about getting sick while traveling, mostly having "the common traveler's ailment... it is so well known that it does not need to be named; you know the ailment I mean." This immediately made me laugh and think of last summer's mess and massive weight loss in Siberia due to this ailment, and not only that, most of stories in his essay take place when he was traveling in Russia. The first one he starts off with is when he was sick at a hotel in St. Petersburg and had to wait for a doctor to come to his hotel room. When he finally recovered, his "irrational love of Russia returned." Ah, how well I know (but still don't understand) that irrational love.

Also, his references to drinking Baltika beer and going into a clinic and telling the person behind the desk "Думаю, что я умру!" ("I think that I am going to die!") were funny to me simply because I could understand them and relate. Though I think he was a little overly paranoid about never eating unwashed fruits and vegetables ("or no washed ones, either. Salmonella bacteria can persist deep in the crinkles of a lettuce leaf.") was a little over the top.... I've been eating lettuce from the dacha all summer and seem to still be alive. And Bryan is a big fan of the shirt-rub method to clean the many apples he consumes on a daily basis, something he's been doing for five years here, and he is capable of running marathons, so I think we're all good.

But why am I writing all about other peoples' experiences in Russia. This blog is supposed to be about mine here, right now. So what have I been up to? Well, I had film class today. And before that this afternoon I had lunch with several other students from the program who didn't have class with Bryan and a woman from the Mellon Foundation who is donating money to the Smolny study abroad program and wanted to hear about our experiences. Hey I'm in for anything when it involved бесплатно (free) sushi and miso soup. Hell, yes.

I also busted out the brown Ecco boots today for the first time. No, no snow yet, but it was chilly and I am trying to wear tights with skirts as much as possible right now before it gets really cold.... so I thought the boots would be a nice addition to keep more of my leg warmer. I would just like to say that after ALL OF YOU PEOPLE (cough, cough, ROSIE) teased me so much last winter about how they looked (Ms. Bartels: "What do you think of my new boots???" Ms. Rosebrock: "Well, they're quite ...... Soviet......"), they FIT IN SO WELL HERE. And I got many compliments today, and several people on the program asked me where I bought them here. Mmmhmm, yes, I love my Russian-looking Ecco boots.

I still have some homework to do for tomorrow and some sketches to mess around with for printmaking on Saturday morning (I somehow I think I'll lack motivation to work on them tomorrow night), so I should finish this up.... but I did get back a roll of black and white film I shot last week -- finally using my Nikon N75 for the first time in Russia -- and the pictures came out much to my liking. I'll "scan" and put them up on pbase this weekend at the latest.